Weekend wrap-up

With the Premiership off for the weekend (unless Portsmouth-City turns your crank, which it doesn’t, in my case), may as well lazily throw out some random crap in bullet-point format:

The Garber-imposed deadline for the David Beckham “will he stay or will he go?” conundrum has come and gone and… he will stay. With the LA Galaxy, that is. AC Milan was unwilling to cough up enough dough and so, Mr. Posh will indeed be toiling away in the outfields of minor league ballparks near you this summer! Y’know, I wish Garber was as stringent with deadlines he had set for himself (when is he going to pick the 2011 teams, anyway?)

Oh Sven, what happened? Cold weather continues to be anathema to the Mexicans, as they — for the third World Cup qualifying cycle in a row — fell 2-0 to the USA in Columbus, Ohio on Wednesday night. In the wake of Rafael Marquez’s senseless (and well-deserved) sending-off for cleating American keeper Tim Howard, Andrea Canales of Goal.com wrote a pretty interesting piece about the role of “machismo” in a footballer’s on-field actions, which extends far beyond Marquez.

Haven’t really seen this making the rounds very much, but is it big news if you’re a Premiership fan: the Premier League is considering a proposal to add a 39th game to the season, with the extra 10 match-ups being determined randomly and being played in cities around the world… determined by the highest bidder. Now, this isn’t unprecedented (the North American sports leagues have all played regular-season games overseas, as novelties), and the fact that cash trumps tradition isn’t exactly news. But the institutionalization of a money-grabbing novelty just seems so… dirty.

And, to hammer home the point that the folks atop the FA mountain are cash-hungry pricks, apparently their legal team has nothing better to do than intimidate websites, like The Offside, that dare to use Premiership club crests without authorization! Oh, the horrors! (Thanks to woody for the link.)

As difficult as it is to believe, the Montreal Impact have apparently sold over 42,000 tickets to their CCL quarter-final showdown with Santos at Olympic Stadium. With a week and a half left until the match, is there the realistic possibility of a packed house? Even if the place is partially papered, or filled with schoolkids who paid six bucks for tickets, just the visual spectacle of the Big O full of soccer fans in February can only mean good things for Canadian soccer (regardless of the outcome of the match… though an Impact win would certainly help).

If you haven’t been following it, Duane at The 24th Minute has been having a pretty interesting conversation with himself about the potential of Ottawa joining the MLS. It seems to cover all the bases, and of course, the discussion is open to the public as well.

With Canada out, who are you supporting at World Cup 2010? Stretty Sam wants to know. Bonus: you can read my elongated, blathering response that’s full of personal details you weren’t interested in!

Last point, with it being Valentine’s Day and all… do you think Roman Abramovich has sent a dozen long-stem roses to Jose Mourinho?